From crowdfunding darling to horribly in debt.
Ouya, the company behind the Android-based microconsole of the same name, tripped a debt covenant (which means they violated the terms of a loan agreement) and is now on an auction block, according to Fortune. We do no know what the asking price is, but investment bank Mesa Global will handle the process.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1713347,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']The Ouya originally raised an astonishing $8,596,474 on Kickstarter in 2012. It later raised $15 million in Series A funding in early 2013. Despite this backing, the console never really took off. Developers had difficulty making money off weak sales, and the little box ended up facing competition from Amazon and others, who launched microconsoles. It also turns out that gamers may not want to play Android games on their TV screens, too.
We contacted Ouya to confirm Fortune’s report.
“Our focus now is trying to recover as much investor capital as possible,” Ouya chief executive officer Julie Uhrman wrote in a confidential e-mail sent out to investors earlier this month, according to Fortune. “We believe we’ve built something real and valuable. I continue to read the tweets and emails of our fans who play Ouya every day, and our catalog is now over 1,000 apps and 40,000 developers. We have the largest library of Android content for the TV — still more than Amazon — hells ya!”
Ouya will need to find a buyer soon if it wants to stay alive.